Magnifica Humanitas is Not "Just" About AI

In spite of all the attention received by Magnifica Humanitas, focused on the relationship between human values and artificial intelligence, it also can be viewed within the context of the full range of social doctrine guiding the Catholic Church since the publishing of Rerum Novarum in 1891. 

Note the intentional choice of name by Pope Leo XIV (who authored Magnifica Humanitas), following Pope Leo XIII (who authored Rerum Novarum). 

The choice of name is deliberate. It implies that his pontificate will center on the Church aggressively defending human dignity and workers' rights.

Every encyclical since Rerum Novarum has elaborated a consistent body of doctrine known as the “social doctrine” of the church, compiled neatly in the document Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. 

The thread running through every encyclical is that the human person possesses an inalienable dignity and that no economic system, political ideology, technological or ecological issue can be evaluated apart from what it does to that dignity:

• Rerum Novarum (1891) argues that workers are not a commodity and have the right to a just wage, the right to form associations and own property.

• Quadragesimo Anno (1931) includes the principle that decisions should be made at the lowest competent level of social organization, to support human agency and creativity.

• Mater et Magistra (1961) discusses human rights and responsibilities

• Pacem in Terris (1963) argues that states, like persons, are subject to a moral order they did not create

• Populorum Progressio (1967) argues that authentic economic development is not gross domestic product  growth but the development of the whole person and every person

• Octogesima Adveniens (1971) addresses the person in the modern city — uprooted from traditional communities, confronted with ideological pluralism, newly exposed to media and mass politics

• Laborem Exercens (1981) argues that work matters not only because it produces goods, but because in working, the person expresses and develops themselves as a subject

• Sollicitudo Rei Socialis discusses solidarity, a commitment to the common good

• Centesimus Annus (1991) argues that markets are legitimate when governed by a strong juridical framework and embedded in a culture that prizes more than consumption and is shaped by concern for the common good

• Caritas in Veritate (2009) insists that love (caritas) belongs in economic and social analysis as a principle of social architecture. He argues that the economy needs not only justice (what is owed) but gift (what is freely given beyond obligation)

• Laudato Si' (2015) argues that the ecological crisis and the human dignity crisis are the same crisis. An economy and culture that exploits the natural world with indifference is animated by the same logic that exploits persons

• Laudate Deum (2023) is about climate change and global governance

• Dilexit Nos (2024) argues that  persons are not bundles of preferences or economic actors but beings with an interior life oriented toward love

• Magnifica Humanitas (2026) extends the principle of human dignity to the use of AI. 

A persistent misreading of Catholic social encyclicals treats them as policy manifestos. 

They are instead a platform of moral principles that guide policy reasoning without determining specific policy outcomes.

In other words, the encyclicals teach ends. They do not generally prescribe the means.

The principles most commonly discussed in social teaching include:

• Human dignity: Every person, by virtue of being human, deserves to be treated as an end, never merely as a means

• The common good:  conditions that allow persons and communities to flourish

• Subsidiarity: decisions should be made at the lowest level of social organization competent to make them effectively

• Solidarity: persons and communities are genuinely responsible for one another

• The Universal Destination of Goods: the goods of creation are destined for all persons

• The Preferential Option for the Poor: in situations of conflict or scarcity, priority belongs to the needs of the most vulnerable.

The corollary is a high and demanding vocation for the laity. If the Church does not prescribe policies, then Catholic politicians, economists, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and citizens bear genuine responsibility for the quality of their prudential reasoning.

The Catholic tradition, outlined in Gaudium et Spes, does explicitly and formally hold that the determination of specific social, economic, and political policies falls within the proper competence of the laity, and that clergy, as clergy, have no special expertise in these matters.

Apostolicam Actuositatem (Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity) reinforces this, saying "the laity must take up the renewal of the temporal order as their own special obligation."

Christifideles Laici (1988) is perhaps the most fully developed treatment. The apostolic exhortation describes the laity's secular character as their "proper and peculiar character.” It is not accidental but essential to their vocation. 

The temporal order (politics, economics, culture, science, the professions) is the specific field of lay apostolic activity, according to Octogesima Adveniens. Clergy and religious who involve themselves in direct political activity are, in an important sense, trespassing on a domain that is not properly theirs.

But there are nuances. 

It does not mean clergy are forbidden from having opinions. Bishops and priests are citizens, often educated people, sometimes with relevant expertise in economics, law, or political philosophy quite apart from their ordination. A bishop who is also a trained economist has that economic competence as a person.

It does not mean the Church is silent on social matters. The entire tradition of social encyclicals demonstrates the opposite. What it means is that the Church's legitimate social teaching operates at the level of moral principles, not policy. 

The Catholic tradition's formal position is both clear and demanding: clergy have genuine and important authority in articulating moral principles, forming conscience, and prophetically naming clear violations of human dignity. 

The clergy has no special competence, and no legitimate authority, in determining the specific social, economic, and political policies through which those principles are imperfectly and provisionally embodied in historical institutions.

Magnifica Humanitas has to be read with all that in mind. 

AI Infra Financing Gets Creative

Financing of AI infrastructure has evolved into a complex, multi-layered financial architecture that extends well beyond traditional corporate balance sheets. 

External financing structures include:

• Strategic partnerships: Frontier model labs and hyperscalers are forming partnerships for regional development, power infrastructure, and equity contributions

• Public sector and sovereign support

• Captive markets: In some instances, state-owned enterprises or governments direct domestic demand toward local chip manufacturers.

Financing Model	Description	Example / Context	Source
Structured/Off-Balance Sheet	Using infrastructure funds and private credit to distribute risk across a layered set of claims.	General industry shift toward using private credit and structured vehicles to fund data center buildouts.	BIS
Community-First Partnerships	Joint commitments between developers and providers to share infrastructure costs and regional responsibilities.	Microsoft's "Community-First AI Infrastructure" plan and OpenAI's "Stargate Community" initiative.	HKS
National Sovereign Investment	Coordinating investments in data, compute, and algorithms through sovereign-backed frameworks.	Frameworks for "AI Triads" in low-to-middle-income countries using structured funding tranches.	Oxford
Captive Market Funding	Generating revenues through domestic mandated demand to fund internal R&D cycles.	Huawei’s AI chip revenue generation within the Chinese domestic ecosystem.	Bruegel

In many instances, the intent is to reduce capital investment requirements by moving to off balance sheet vehicles or “compute as payment” arrangements.

Hyperscaler	Model Supplier	Deal Type / Structure	Estimated Value / Capacity	Source
Google	Anthropic	Multi-year compute commitment + Equity investment	Up to $40B investment; 3.5GW TPU capacity (via Broadcom)	Silicon Republic
Amazon (AWS)	Anthropic	Compute credit + Equity investment	Up to $25B total commitment; multi-year cloud compute	Silicon Republic
Microsoft	OpenAI	Exclusive cloud provider + Multi-stage capital injection	~$10B+ in multi-year funding; 49% profit stake	Aranca
Meta	N/A (Self-build)	Structured finance (SPV) for data center buildout	~$30B "Hyperion" SPV (Blue Owl Capital led)	SoftwareSeni
Google/Anthropic	SpaceX	Compute infrastructure delivery contracts	Potentially >$70B over multi-year term	AA

As seen with Meta’s "Hyperion" transaction, hyperscalers are increasingly utilizing Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and partnerships with private credit firms (e.g., Blue Owl Capital) to fund massive data center buildouts. This allows the companies to offload the capital intensity of the physical build while retaining operational control and capacity priority.

In many of these deals, "compute" has become a literal form of payment. The Google-Anthropic and Amazon-Anthropic deals are not merely cash-for-equity; they are deeply intertwined with multi-gigawatt (GW) capacity commitments and customized hardware access (such as Google’s TPUs).

Financing is no longer focused just on chips. The capital is increasingly directed toward the "AI Triad"—the integration of compute, dedicated energy infrastructure, and data center physical shells. This is evidenced by the trend of co-locating data centers with renewable energy sources and the invocation of national defense acts (as seen in the U.S. in early 2026) to prioritize grid expansion for AI.

SpaceX GPU Deal with Google Cloud is About Enterprise Nvidia Compute Demand

Google has signed a deal deal with SpaceX for access to graphics processing unit compute amounting to about $31.5 billion for three years, suggesting just how massive Google believes its own artificial intelligence computing needs may be, especially to support enterprise customers. 

The deal gives Google access to some 110,000 Nvidia GPUs, beginning in October 2026. 

Some will see this as a bridge to the time when Google can bring its owned compute facilities online at the scale Google believes is necessary. 

Gigawatt-scale data centers take years to build, so the deal is a hedge that allows Google to supply 

capacity other “compute as a service” suppliers might otherwise take. 

Enterprise customers prefer NVIDIA’s CUDA ecosystem. So leasing Nvidia capacity from SpaceX allows Google Cloud to sell what enterprise clients want without diverting its custom accelerator (tensor processing units) supply away from its own model development and inferencing.

By some estimates, Nvidia GPUs, such as the H100 SXM5 nodes, will remain in short supply until 2027.  

GPU	Typical Lead Time (Direct Purchase)	Cloud Availability
H100 SXM5	36-52 weeks	Limited on hyperscalers; neo-clouds
H200 SXM5	40+ weeks	Reserved pools mostly sold out
B200	Allocated through H2 2027	Limited to select providers
A100 80GB	8-16 weeks	More available; watch for constrained VRAM
L40S	4-8 weeks	Good availability; strong for inference

Google is paying about $8,363 per GPU per month, or roughly $11.45 per hour assuming the machines run around the clock. 

Top-tier NVIDIA chips on major cloud platforms currently go for perhaps $5 to $15 per hour, depending upon instance types, with newer architectures like the Blackwell or Reubin LPX for Agentic AI applications perhaps costing from $15 to $50 per hour. 

By some estimates estimates, Google will layer its own software, support, and service guarantees on top of the SpaceX infrastructure, then charge enterprise customers somewhere between $18 and $70 per GPU per hour. 

For SpaceX, set to go public on June 12, 2026, the additional revenue will undoubtedly provide an underpinning for the new public firm’s valuation. The deal adds about $950 million per month of committed revenue. 

Many expect the SpaceX IPO will be the largest in history.

Butterfly Effect: 100% Deterministic and Yet 0% Predictable

Maybe you have been puzzled by the butterfly effect, the idea that a tiny flap of a butterfly's wings in one part of the world can fundamentally alter weather patterns weeks later. 

The core concept really is not the flap of a butterfly’s wings, but the idea that highly-chaotic systems are highly sensitive on initial conditions. 

In stable (linear) systems, small errors in measurement result in proportionally small errors in forecasting. 

In chaotic systems, however, uncertainty grows exponentially over time. As mathematician Edward Lorenz observed, doubling your observation accuracy only pushes your reliable prediction window forward by a tiny, fixed interval rather than doubling it.

In highly-chaotic systems, sub-microscopic variables such as a fraction of a degree in temperature or a microscopic shift in air pressure can quickly snowball into macroscopic outcomes, rendering long-term forecasting impossible.

Every chaotic system has a distinct timeframe known as the Lyapunov time—the duration over which a system remains predictable before the errors outpace the meaningful data. 

This time scale varies drastically depending on the system:

• Electrical circuits: ~1 millisecond

• Global weather patterns: ~1 to 2 weeks

• The inner solar system: ~4 to 5 million years.

Beyond a system's specific Lyapunov time, forecasts essentially degrade into educated guesses and the system appears entirely random.

The butterfly effect severely complicates prediction in a wide variety of highly dynamic, non-linear complex systems:

• Economics & Finance: Seemingly minor shifts in supply, policy, or public sentiment can trigger cascading market reactions or crashes

• Epidemiology: The initial outbreak location and minor mutations of a virus can drastically alter the spread and severity of global pandemics.

• Ecology: Removing or introducing a single predatory species can cause unforeseen, system-wide environmental collapses.

Oddly enough, I find, chaos theory is strictly deterministic, yet unpredictable.  

The future is completely determined by the past, with zero randomness involved: 

• No Randomness: If you could input the exact same initial conditions twice, a chaotic system would yield the exact same output every time.

• The Catch: You can never measure initial conditions perfectly.

• The Result: Even a microscopic difference in your starting data alters the final result entirely.

Chaos theory means a system can be 100-percent deterministic while remaining zero percent predictable in the long term.

Crazy!

"Magnifica Humanitas" is No "Rerum Novarum"

At the risk of seemingly disagreeing with "Magnfica Humanitas," it is still possible to compare that document with Rerum Novarum, upon which the new encyclical is based, and see clear differences, beyond the specific problems tackled by each document.

At the risk of downplaying artificial intelligence impact, which many could characterize as a general-purpose technology that will transform nearly every industry, the encyclical Rerum Novarum ("Of New Things"), issued by Pope Leo XIII on May 15, 1891, was not addressed “merely” to the impact of the industrial revolution on workers.

Laissez-faire economics; private property; socialist and Marxist ideas were paramount issues also tackled by Rerum Novarum. 

To the extent that Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is modeled purposefully on Rerum Novarum, we can compare the two documents.

To be sure, Rerum Novarum focused on:

• potential exploitation of the working class

• Protecting workers

• Materialism, moral and spiritual issues

• ideological extremes (unregulated capitalism and socialism).

But Rerum Novarum also clearly established some clear and practical guidance for Catholic social teaching that are unmatched by any other religion or spiritual belief. 

Catholic social teaching means the Catholic church is clearly and officially:

• Opposed to socialism and collectivist economics

• A supporter of the fundamental right of private property

• A supporter of the right to form trade unions and other intermediate social institutions

• A supporter of market-based economies. 

Magnifica Humanitas is focused on AI’s impact on human dignity. And, to be sure, it warns of the dangers of concentrated “technocratic” power. 

But calls for ethical governance, transparency, accountability, subsidiarity (participation by communities), solidarity and orienting technology toward the common good and human flourishing are not in the same league as opposing both unrestrained capitalism and socialism (communism). 

Rerum Novarum defended the right of private property, for example. So Magnifica Humanitas might criticize unethical behavior, but it does not call for expropriation.

Magnifica Humanitas argues for an AI that serves humanity, not dominates it. We might see that as in line with the argument of Rerum Novarum. Some possible differences are that Rerum Novarum had more direct and practical implications. 

Rerum Novarum:

• Made opposition to socialism foundational for Catholic social teaching

• Specifically supported the role of labor unions and other social groupings

• Supports private property rights as essential for human freedom and creativity

• Supports market-based economics. 

Magnifica Humanitas, in my reading, includes nothing similar. 

Socialists and other leftists might argue Magnifica Humanitas supports expropriation of an AI firm’s  property. Since Rerum Novarum, that is in conflict with Catholic social teaching. 

Magnifica Humanitas contains no similar institutional practices (supporting labor unions as a counterweight and many types of intermediate institutions (family, guilds, social organizations) as a way of restraining the exercise of all social power by the state. 

Magnifica Humanitas contains no new proposals for restricting market economies or embracing socialism or expropriation. 

Instead, it is a moral exhortation; a statement of principles; a broad action to exercise prudence.  

As Rerum Novarum arguably shaped moral discourse, legitimized reforms, and encouraged balanced responses over revolution, so Magnifica Humanitas attempts the same. 

Still, one might read the new document as offering few practical pillars, compared to Rerum Novarum.